Research

My personal research employs digital tools and traditional descriptive bibliography to look at how early modern people shaped texts and early modern texts shaped people. Most recently, I explored how Sir Edward Dering’s enthusiasm for home theatricals resulted in a revised version of King Henry the Fourth that emphasizes his focus on the actions of the gentry—and reflects his experience as both a reader and enthusiastic viewer of plays.

See more in: “Marks of Amateur Performance: Edward Dering’s manuscript of King Henry the Fourth and other traces of performance-minded readers,” in Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage: Extra Theatrical Forms and Spaces, ed. Amrita Sen and Jennifer Woods (The Arden Shakespeare, forthcoming).

Conversely, I’ve also explored how our we use digital tools today to interpret earlier textual models. The way we conceptualize information over time, what we choose to preserve, reflect, interpret, or disregard, shows our informational priorities and cultural emphasis in remediating early modern texts. The answer to the question “Does Jonson Break the Data Model? is Yes, and he’d probably like it that way.

See more in The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface. “Does Jonson Break the Data Model?: Creating Interrelated Data Models for Early Modern English Drama” Routledge, 2023.